Theology in the News

An historic document has just been released in Geneva, which is effectively a global code of conduct for mission and evangelism.

The document is a collaborative effort between the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), the Pontifical Council for Inter Religious Dialogue (PCID) of the Catholic Church, and the World Council of Churches (WCC).

The three bodies include Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Evangelical, Pentecostal and independent churches with a combined membership of some two billion people representing nearly 90 percent of the world’s Christians.

This document has been put together in response to accusations of the Church seeking to “unethically” convert “non-Christians”, which is code for those of other religions.

Here’s some gumpf:

“It is a historic text both for its content and because this is the first time since the 16th century that the three main bodies representing nearly all of world Christianity jointly endorse one document and recommend it to their respective constituencies,”

You can access the document on the following link in PDF format:

Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World: Recommendations for Conduct

Evangelical Protestant leaders who live in the Global South (sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and most of Asia) generally are optimistic about the prospects for evangelicalism in their countries. But those who live in the Global North (Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) tend to be more pessimistic.

Seven-in-ten evangelical leaders who live in the Global South (71%) expect that five years from now the state of evangelicalism in their countries will be better than it is today. But a majority of evangelical leaders in the Global North expect that the state of evangelicalism in their countries will either stay about the same (21%) or worsen (33%) over the next five years.

In addition, most leaders in the Global South (58%) say that evangelical Christians are gaining influence on life in their countries. By contrast, most leaders in the Global North (66%) say that, in the societies in which they live, evangelicals are losing influence. U.S. evangelical leaders are especially downbeat about the prospects for evangelical Christianity in their society; 82% say evangelicals are losing influence in the United States today, while only 17% think evangelicals are gaining influence.

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The survey finds nearly unanimous agreement among the global evangelical leaders on some key beliefs, such as that Christianity is the one, true faith leading to eternal life. They also hold traditional views on family and social issues. For example, more than nine-in-ten say abortion is usually wrong (45%) or always wrong (51%). About eight-in-ten say that society should discourage homosexuality (84%) and that men should serve as the religious leaders in the marriage and family (79%).

Virtually all the leaders surveyed (98%) also agree that the Bible is the word of God. But they are almost evenly divided between those who say the Bible should be read literally, word for word (50%), and those who do not think that everything in the Bible should be taken literally (48%). They are similarly split on whether it is necessary to believe in God in order to be a moral person (49% yes, 49% no), and whether drinking alcohol is compatible with being a good evangelical (42% yes, 52% no).

In a number of ways, leaders in the Global South are more conservative than those in the Global North. For instance, leaders in the Global South are more likely than those in the Global North to read the Bible literally (58% vs. 40%) and to favor making the Bible the official law of the land in their countries (58% vs. 28%). More evangelical leaders in the Global South than in the Global North take the position that abortion is always wrong (59% vs. 41%), and more say that a wife must always obey her husband (67% vs. 39%). Leaders in the Global South are also much more inclined than those in the Global North to say that consuming alcohol is incompatible with being a good evangelical (75% vs. 23%).

Overall, evangelical leaders around the world view secularism, consumerism and popular culture as the greatest threats they face today. More of the leaders express concern about these aspects of modern life than express concern about other religions, internal disagreements among evangelicals or government restrictions on religion.

….read all

I was intending to feature an article on the Crusades in my upcoming “few links of interest”. However, as this is such a superb piece and deserving of being widely read, I’m dedicating this post to it, and heartily commend it to your attention:

First Principles – Four Myths about the Crusades

I recently posted on the explosion of Christianity in China, and the propensity this phenomenon has to cause social change.

And now this, which should serve as a warning to those who wish to eradicate Christianity from the West:

In the West we are doing our best to destroy our Christian heritage but in China, Chinese intellectuals are coming around to the view that it is precisely this heritage that has made the West so successful.?

Former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Dominic Lawson, in a review in the Sunday Times of Niall Ferguson’s new book, ‘Civilisation: The West and the Rest’, carries a quote from a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in which he tries to account for the success of the West, to date.

He said: “One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world.

“We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.

“Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system.

“But in the past twenty years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.

“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”

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“What [the field of economics has] discovered is what you’ve known for at least a century,” said Paul Collier, director of the U.K.-based Centre for the Study of African Economies. “What makes people work properly, is not primarily incentives. It’s internalizing the objectives of the organization.”

“Around the world, the church has built organizations that do just that,” he said.

Collier addressed a plenary session of the 2011 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, which brought about 300 leaders in Catholic social ministry to Washington Feb. 13-16.

The economist said that development failures in Africa stem from two unsuccessful models. The first is based on 1950s European style state-run organizations that have proved to be ineffective, and the second, popularized in the 1990s, uses monetary incentives too closely tied to performance standards.

These models produced organizations, Collier argued, that often fail to deliver on their promises and mission because people who work for them put their own interests and the organizations’ interests ahead of those of the general public.

By contrast, church organizations have time and again proven that they are effective at delivering basic social services like education and healthcare because it is understood that the chruch provides a common good and a service that is in everyone’s best interest, he said.

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Pew Forum:

(RNS) While mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. continue to experience decades-long decline, the memberships of Pentecostal traditions are on the rise, according to new figures compiled by the National Council of Churches.

The Roman Catholic Church (No. 1) and the Southern Baptist Convention (No. 2) are still significantly larger than all other North American denominations, but Catholics posted minimal growth of less than 1 percent, and Southern Baptist membership fell for a third straight year, according to the 2011 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.

Produced annually by the NCC, the yearbook is considered one of the most reliable recorders of church membership. The figures in the 2011 yearbook were compiled by churches in 2009, reported to the NCC in 2010 and released Monday (Feb. 14).

Mainline Protestant churches that have seen a fall in membership since the 1970s continued their decline; the Presbyterian Church (USA) reported the greatest membership drop (2.6 percent) of the 25 largest denominations.

Other denominations reporting declines include the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church as well as the more evangelical Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The membership declines in mainline churches led to a 1 percent decrease in total U.S. church membership, to 145.8 million.

Despite the national decline, some smaller denominations’ memberships are increasing.

“Churches which have been increasing in membership in recent years continue to grow and likewise, those churches which have been declining in recent years continue to decline,” writes the Rev. Eileen Lindner, the editor of the yearbook.

Pentecostal churches make up four of the 25 largest churches, and both the Assemblies of God and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) increased in membership. Only six of the 25 largest memberships increased over the previous year.

Jehovah’s Witnesses experienced the greatest growth percentage overall, gaining 4.37 percent according to the yearbook. Several historically black denominations continued a years-long practice of not submitting fresh figures.

The 10 largest Christian bodies reported in the 2011 yearbook are:

1. The Catholic Church: 68.5 million, up 0.57 percent.

2. Southern Baptist Convention: 16.1 million, down .42 percent.

3. The United Methodist Church: 7.8 million, down 1 percent.

4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 6 million, up 1.42 percent.

5. The Church of God in Christ: 5.5 million, no membership updates reported.

6. National Baptist Convention, USA: 5 million, no membership updates reported.

7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: 4.5 million, down 1.96 percent.

8. National Baptist Convention of America, 3.5 million, no membership updates reported.

9. Assemblies of God: 2.9 million, up .52 percent.

10. Presbyterian Church (USA): 2.7 million, down 2.61 percent.

Very interesting:

These times we live in have been called a lot of things. But perhaps the most surprising description came Sunday from one of the country’s leading religion scholars.

“The most exciting time in Christianity … since the 1st century.”

Yes, even more thrilling than the Protestant Reformation, Philip Jenkins told about 75 people at Charlotte’s Westminster Presbyterian Church.

The reason: The staggering growth in the number of Christians in Asia, Latin America and especially Africa – a phenomenon he called “a global religious revolution” and one that “reverses a trend that people had been used to for several hundred years.”

To back up his claim, Jenkins – the author of a host of influential books, including “The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity” – offered a series of eye-popping statistics and projections.

Among them:

In 1900, Europe and North America accounted for about 85 percent of the world’s Christians. By 2050, that number will have shrunk to about 25 percent.

During the same period, he said the number of Christians in Africa have, well, skyrocketed seems too tame a word. In 1900, there were 10 million; in 2000, 363 million. By 2015, Jenkins expects 500 million. And, by 2050, he predicted that Africa would become the first continent to have 1 billion Christians. Put another way: One of every three Christians in the world will be African – and that’s not counting the Africans who will have moved to the United States or Europe.

In the 20th century, about half of the people on the African continent moved from a tribal or pagan religion to either Christianity or Islam. And, Jenkins added, “Christians outpaced Muslims considerably” – by a margin of about 4 to 1.

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On Sunday, he told his audience that, right now, the three most Christian regions in the world are Europe, Latin America and Africa – in that order.

But by 2025, as Europe continues down the road of secularism, “Africa and Latin America will be jostling each other for (that) title,” Jenkins said. “By 2050, no doubt, Africa wins.”

Though the United States will continue to be a religious – and predominantly Christian country – it will be immigrants and the children and grandchildren of immigrants who help it stay that way, Jenkins said.

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And don’t forget about the explosive Christian growth in China!

So much for the decline of Christianity!

As President Hu Jintao meets with President Obama this week, some observers say an explosive growth in Christianity may be transforming the officially atheist regime. According to China Aid, the number of Christians in China has increased 100-fold since 1949. Current estimates range from 80 million to 130 million active members. One Chinese Christian businessman predicts that number doubling or even tripling in the next generation.

According to Dr. David Aikman, author of “Jesus in Beijing,” “If the Chinese become Christianized … which doesn’t mean you have a majority of people who are Christians, but it means about 25 to 30 percent of people in positions of influence, in politics, in culture, in the media. If you have that component of a major power that accepts Christianity enthusiastically as a guide to life, (then) that is going to change the world view of the leaders of China.”

Protestant evangelist Dr. Luis Palau, who has preached in China, says Christians are among the country’s most cohesive groups. “They all preach the same gospel. There are no liberals or conservative branches … they all believe the same.”

Supporters say even estimating 80 million Christians in China, a conservative figure, still has them outnumbering the membership of the Communist Party, which at last check, in June 2010, and was 78 million.

China Aid’s Bob Fu says Christianity experienced growth after the Tiananmen Square conflict. Six of the 30 student leaders who were arrested converted to Christianity.

“Ironically,” Fu says, “church history shows that the more the political persecution, the more believers there will be. This is the case in the Roman Empire, and also with China.”

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